Anyway, at our last meeting we went over the rest of the year, starting with the September 26th workshop. Lunch will be chicken and dumpling soup prepared by Marcia. Each of us are bringing an ingredient or something that will go along with soup. Sounds delicious! Bring your machines, tools and ideas for something to be sold at the Hometown Holidays on December 5th. We have all kinds of fabrics available for you to use or if you'd rather use your own or work on your items at home that's okay. If you aren't sure what you want to do, we have a few small patterns on hand or you can just come and sew strips together to be used in a larger quilt for us to raffle off in the future. We don't have any embellishments in our stash, so if your project needs button, zippers, etc. you will have to provide them yourself. We have a tub we can use to store finished items at the church, that way they are all together and we can get them priced before we set up. If you were or weren't at the last meeting and you still want to see the demonstration for the fold and sew blocks, I will be bringing them so we can go over them again. You need 7 or 8 10" squares and at least twice as many or more 5" squares to do all or most of the blocks.
We've decided that our next two regular meetings will also be workshops along with the October workshop so we have enough time to get these items finished. That would be the October 8th meeting, the October 24th meeting (please note the date change because of Halloween) and the November 12th meeting. There is no workshop in November because of the Thanksgiving holiday.
December 10th will be our annual Christmas potluck and gift exchange starting at 6:00 p.m. at the church. Let us know by the November meeting what you plan on bringing for the potluck. Everything is open at this time. The gift exchange, if you want to participate, is either a notions gift with a limit of $20 or a homemade item. The gifts should be wrapped and will be placed under the tree, if there is one available. Names will be drawn and that person will pick a gift, the next name that is drawn has the option of either taking a new gift or taking the gift from another member until all the names are drawn. After the last name is drawn then we will open the package we have ended up with. Hope everyone enjoys this version of the gift exchange.
The next meeting after the first of the year will be on January 14th with the workshop on January 30th. Here I'll interject our snow day plans. If the weather is looking nasty, we will make the decision whether to hold the meeting or cancel by 5:00. It will be posted here, on facebook, you will receive an e-mail from me and we will also make up a call list so nobody has to do all the calling. Sometimes it can be nasty in the morning and by evening everything is clear. Of course you have the option of not coming even though the meeting is still on. That is totally up to you.
2016 is the year for our quilt show. Tentative date is April 9th at the New London Alliance Church. The public is invited to display quilts they have made and this year we are setting up categories. These will include, mini quilts, table toppers and/or runners, wall hangings up to 36", wall hangings up to 60", wearable, bed size quilts, crib quilts, holidays, antique quilts, unfinished tops, misc. such as purses, bags, pillows and our BOM challenge. The deadline for entries is March 1st so we may get tags with the quilt information printed. You can start letting us know what quilt you are going to display so we can get started on making the tags. We want them to be uniform with each other and easily read. Information needed is owner, who pieced, who quilted, machine or hand, year and name of quilt if available and who the pattern was by.
Here are a couple of show and tells.
This is a rag quilt by Gloria, love the colors
These blocks were done by Carol before she passed away and never finished. We did the two grey block with her name and in memory of and put them all together. This will be hung when we go to an event in her memory.
Believe it or not, this knotted rug by Racheana is made out of her husbands sweatpants.
Here's our group working on the fold and sew blocks pictured below.
I think that's it. I hope see you at the workshop on September 26th. Get those fall decorations out!
Chris P.
